


But It Won't Amount To Anything [Next To The Love]

by EveningRose309



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkwardness, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, First Meetings, Hurt/Comfort, I Have Wanted To Do Something Like This, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Light Angst, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character(s), Minor Queenie Goldstein/Jacob Kowalski, Multi, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Past Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, Past Child Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, The Author Regrets Nothing, awkward first meetings, for a long time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:28:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28712037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EveningRose309/pseuds/EveningRose309
Summary: It was a rainy day in June when I first saw him; bright eyes, grin on his face, a firm handshake and, oh, that lilt.I hated it.Or the Grindelgraves Soulmate AU I've always wanted to write but never did. Set after the first film, the second one doesn't happen the way it does.
Relationships: Original Percival Graves/Gellert Grindelwald
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	But It Won't Amount To Anything [Next To The Love]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kallistob](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kallistob/gifts), [AlastorGrim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlastorGrim/gifts).



> To kallistob: hi, yes, it is I, the brat who kept asking about the soulmate au and now having written one of my own. I hope you enjoy this and that my writing is slightly better than it was three years ago. And of course, does our boy Percival some justice.
> 
> To Mortem: hello maniac, I'm using your nickname for Gellert if you don't mind. Hope you're feeling better. Watch me not be able to write Sweenwald tomorrow because my brain had to concoct _this MESS. ___  
> _  
> _So. Where the hell did this come from?_  
> _  
>  _  
> _Short answer: I was watching The Notebook._  
> _  
>  _  
> _Not so short answer: I was watching The Notebook, finishing a sketch with Graves and Grindelwald and Coach from The Gentlemen and it got me to thinking. Or more accurately, my mind was struck with an image of Young!Graves and Young!Grindelwald and that one soulmate prompt I wrote a snippet of on Tumblr {@evening-rose-309} and it just...happened._  
> _  
>  _  
> _Didn't help that The Notebook was set in the fifties [I think, I can tell by the hair] and had some really great atmosphere, even though I am not a fan of how Noah first met Allie. Got watch it for yourself. You will cringe and shout and just....no. No boi, that is NOT how you do it._  
> _  
>  _  
> _Disclaimer: I am not Irish, and though I would like if you read this as a healthily Irish Graves in your head, I do apologize if any of the phrasing sounds nothing like that, especially towards the end._  
> _

* * *

It was a rainy day in June when I first saw him; bright eyes, grin on his face, a firm handshake and, oh, that lilt. I hated it. I wasn’t sure why at first, but looking back on it now, I think it had something to do with the way Grams was looking at him. Like his slurs were a novelty, whereas with me if I dared let Mam’s ‘influence’- as he called it -in me show, he’d stroke me with the broad end of his belt. Neither was very fair, I do admit, but Gill won’t let me apologize. He says he hated his lilt back then too. I have the sneaking suspicion he did it just to piss off his Da.

We had dinner with them and I was sat next to Mam and Gill next to his Mama. We were across from each other, doing the exact opposite from what our parents were doing. I had my head down and he had his head down but I could tell he was tuning in to whatever political nonsense our respective fathers were debating on. Our mothers weren’t talking per se, more laughing at their husbands’ jokes and occasionally asking each other benign questions - which told me just enough that our families weren’t quite so in-similar. She snuck glances though, Gill’s Mama, his way, very discreet-like, like Mam did before Grams caught her that one time - and when _he_ caught me sneaking glances the same way when she was, he sent me something that looked like those foul illustrations of green witches the no-maj’s liked putting in their children’s books. He says the jealousy ringing off me was palpable, which was why he did it: to warn me off. I tell him now his attempt at a menacing smile at the age of twelve could have frightened a door-mouse - but only a door-mouse.

Fancy that, now, his smile had senators and kaisers and presidents and kings wetting themselves through the fireplace. Suppose anything looks scary when it's made out of flames.

Dinner finished at nine, our fathers locked us up in the library at nine-thirty. Mam had given me the talking-to beforehand; be nice, ask questions, talk about your interest, don’t bring up his eyes or the fact that his hair was white-golden blonde when both his parents had faun. I still hate that he let his hair go all white the way he did, but I will admit it makes him look less like a twink or a baby doll and more into something useful; like, say, and honest to goodness corpse in the nighttime, unironically adept at keeping off the absolute nightmare that was suitors in your twenties. Not that I had many or that he’d actually meant to- the creep, spying on me like that -but the gestures were sorely appreciated.

I did ask him though, about his hair, because let’s face facts; twelve-year-olds are gremlins and will do just about anything to make a situation uncomfortable if they don’t like being in it. Or at least, I had, for once, because Grams wasn’t watching and somehow being around that strange little Austrian kaiser-in-the-making made me want to be a rebel and a git. Terrible influence, even then, and for all intents and purposes made even worse when he gave me something not even my mother did when Tristan and Margo were shot on the job and Allison came down with the flu: a straight answer.

“I’m a bastard,” he’d said and somehow, somehow, got me to bad mouth my own family with those three- and a half -simple words. The whole thing was a haze, still, even now, and throughout our whole back and forth, the only thing I could keep my eyes on were his and his mouth and his wild hands telling me “Oh, my father wanted to drown me, he bought me off my mother, Mama stopped him dead with the bag in his hands ready to throw me in the lake outside their house, she pushed him, he beat her within an inch of her life, she took me, he took a second wife and another house and left us to die till your family owled told him about your soulmark…” and so on and so forth and etcetera by the window with the rain pattering against it and the droplets racing down and the old dead ash scratching at the glass but wasn’t so scary anymore with this terrible, horrible little boy there with me getting me to talk about my Grams- “Belt or cane?” “Depends if it’s raining.” -and my Da- “Tristan the favorite?” “Margo, actually.” -and my Mam- “I like her voice.” “You do?” “Yeah, yours too.” “Oh.” “Can you speak gaelic?” -and for the first time since its sudden appearance, I was glad for my soulmark and that my family's legacy was written the way it was.

The whole weekend had been filled with conversations like that - and more than a handful late night escapades our parents- bar maybe Gellert’s Mama -had absolutely no inkling that we were getting up to. Mam was a little more than betrayed by it, years later, when I did tell her just how her son and the errant Grindelwald boy had got on so well so quickly, but how was I to tell her I’d been staying up late past my bedtime reading muggle stories with my soul-partner, being taught to climb trees and build snow forts and teaching in turn advanced curriculum disapproved potions because he asked and was apparently bollocks with a bunsen and spirits?

And he’s still bollocks, by the way, just so we’re clear.

“Well,” she would say to me at the table of my downtown Manhattan apartment with a mug in hand, “that would explain the houses I found with the little runes on them. Good thing I read them too, ‘fore I hosed them down.”

“Why?”

“Well Percy dear, it wouldn’t have been good for either of you if I’d been struck by lightning or caught on fire or been mauled to death by a bear now would it have been? I mean who would be here to make you hot cocoa and listen to your moaning if I did, hmm?”

Yeah, I hadn’t been too happy about that either. Frankly, all it did was feed my ire for the bastard. That was ‘98, when I’d found out what he did and what happened after he did it. I can’t blame him for defending Mama’s honor, but did he really have to use a hex so dangerous, knowing what it would have done had things not gone the way it had?

Pales in comparison a bit, though, to the after, to when I found out about Dumbledore. If it had come from Gill’s own mouth, that would have been fine, but to hear it from Travers? _Travers_?

Apology after apology, he grovels and I let him. I have forgiven him, somewhat, but to know he’d done something so permanent, a blood pact for Faust sake, right after he’d managed to get both our soulmarks blown and charred off?

Some days I have to remind myself Gill’s an irrational, impulsive, explosive human being. Other days, all I have to do is look down at my wrist and know I can’t leave him be - for my sake, his, and others.

I suppose it did make it easier, especially in the years to come. Not many knew about us, about my having a mark in the first place. The general consensus towards marked people was reverence, the sort of adoration and admiration and all around special treatment my Gram wanted nothing to do with. A Graves got by how a Graves got by and that _wasn’t_ by using his status as an excuse to take the path of pins. All the same after the accident, I had to pretend it wasn’t there, that I was just one of the regular people passing by on the street; a little more than average boy made to wear his father’s wand holster to school everyday and now a more than average man with an unsightly scar along his wand arm. Certainly helped with the reputation and some for the ego, though I do admit it hurt, somedays, when people would tell me I was lucky to survive whatever accident I was in - that they thought I was in.

Let’s get one thing straight, now that we’re here: I don’t regret it. Not one bit. What I had to do for the arsehole, what I put you all through, what happened to that boy; I Don’t. Call me a monster, see if I care, but don’t you dare blame me or him for what actually led us all down this road. Does it keep me up at night? Yes, yes it does, but more than anything I am furious. The constitution, well it’s been a mess for more than a century now hasn’t it? The system I helped propagate, that we all had a hand in upkeeping, has never been fair, now or ever. The Statute - a cheat. The Congression of Wizards - coward hiding behind an ivory tower and some shrewd sense of honor and duty. Duty doesn’t put innocent men behind bars. Duty doesn’t execute a family without trial. Duty has no place governing who marries who and why.

And if I am sorry for anything, I’m sorry I ever let you all believe that it did.

I would like to apologize - to all of you. For leaving you all behind, for the years I played this game behind your backs. For the lies, for the false promises. For the memories. For you, Tina, that I ever let you trust me, that I ever once led you to believe that I was a good man. Gill likes to tell me that I am and, maybe, by this segment I might be. I don’t expect you to forgive me and I hope you don’t, because you have sense and I expect you to use that at least.

The end is nigh now, and Queenie, because I know you’re the one reading this since it is addressed to you and Vinda Rosier is one very, very thorough woman who would never get caught or be mistaken or make a mistake in a million years; the reason I wrote this letter:

Chase your no-maj. I have seen your mark many times and Gill has seen Jacob’s. Keep him. Don’t you ever, ever let him out of your sight for even a second, because if you do, you might not see him again - or worse, not recognize the person he becomes. It is going to be hard, what with the rules being the way they are now and you might not always want the same things. You may fight. You may curse at each other. One of you might throw a shot glass at the other one’s head- he missed, it’s fine -and then come crying begging on your knees once it’s over. You might find yourselves in the kitchen on more than one occasion after a fight, passing the bottle or the glass or a loaf of stale bread between yourselves wondering how it was you got into this mess and why it was you the other person was stuck to and if it’s possible to unstick yourselves. On more than one occasion, you may wish he was dead, you may want to run away or shove him through a frozen lake-

-but it won’t amount to anything next to the Love. 

The Love, the happy times, the times when you’re glad he’s beside you or that your mothers get along or that he agrees that that one uncle of yours with the blabbermouth and the wandering hands should be shipped in a box to a nondescript island in the Caribbean. The late nights with your hands on his shoulders or his on yours kneading your pains away. The times he’s there for your sorrows, the times you’re there for his. The kisses shared in the dark, the jokes cracked in between, the tears shed on bad nights. And nothing, nothing will ever be worth more to you than seeing his face at the end of the day, of every day, looking at you like you’re the most precious thing in the world and speaking your name like a prayer, like it’s the one thing in the world keeping him whole and good and happy.

Dear Queenie, I regret nothing of this, of him and or everything. And I hope neither will you or Tina or your loves.

With all due regards,

Percival. G. Graves

And charmed to the nine hells,

Gellert K. Grindelwald

* * *

Dear Mister Graves,

Thank you for the letter, your story was very touching. I hope you’re doing well.

Sadly, mine doesn’t have quite as pure intentions. Teenie sends her regards - but that won't be all she’s sending.


End file.
